If we want more income equality, should we return to the economy of George W. Bush?
BY JIM LINDGREN
January 28 at 5:41 am
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Other things being equal, income equality is better than inequality. But other things are NOT equal. The easiest way to make incomes more equal in the short run is to have a recession.

Much has been made of growing income inequality since 1979, but very little attention has been paid to which of the four presidental administrations preceding Barack Obama increased income equality and which ones reduced it. In short, the two presidents whose terms involved improving income equality were the two George Bushes and the two whose terms were associated with worsening after-tax income equality were Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. It is probably not an accident that the two presidents in whose administrations the GDP grew the most were the two presidents whose time in office coincided with worsening income equality.

The president under whom the poorest quintile enjoyed the largest increase in after-tax household income was George W. Bush. And the two administrations under whom the richest quintile and richest 1 percent fared the worst were the two Presidents Bush. Among Barack Obama’s four immediate predecessors, the two biggest income equalizers were George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

Just to be clear, I am not pining for the good old days of the economy of George W. Bush.

But George W. Bush was the most successful of our recent past presidents in achieving very substantial increases in incomes for the poorest quintile (+18.4%), while keeping gains for the richest quintile and richest 1 percent at modest levels. For example, under Bush the Younger, the incomes of the richest 1 percent rose only 6.5 percent in eight years, compared to a staggering 84 percent under Clinton and 91 percent under Reagan.
If you would rather have Bill Clinton’s economy than George W. Bush’s economy – and I definitely would – then as a practical matter you probably don’t care overmuch about income equality.

No, the workers are contributing to the producing. If your job is to mindlessly punch a button every few seconds all day long, it doesn't matter whether each button push creates one widget or 100 widgets (as a result of the technology behind the button), you're still doing the same job and can be replaced by the same pool of potential button pushers. In that example, the worker creating 100 widgets per button push is no more productive than the worker creating 1 widget. The worker plus technology is 100x more productive though.

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"I'll see you guys in New York." ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to US military personnel upon his release from US custody at Camp Bucca in Iraq during Obama's first year in office.

One insurance policy to pay for (if you provide it). One retirement to provide for/put into. If you're a small company, you might be able to stay under the limit for the new healthcare laws. Across a larger company you might be able to save in the number of supervisors you need to hire to supervise those other people. There are many reasons.

Well that is unfair. They should pay 10 times as much to their retirement and pay the fewer supervisors 10 times as much. Anything less is not the same percent of production. Paying for the purchase of and or maintenance of the machinery or software doesn't matter because what matters is what percent of production is paid to the workers. Likewise the amont of money the lower class makes and what standard of living they have doesn't matter . We need everyone to have closer to the same amount of toys. Ask anyone marking $10 per hour and they will tell you that they would much rather make 8 bucks per hour with the owner of the company making 100 grand than they would staying at 10 per hour with that greedy owner making a million.

As much as everyone likes to rewrite history the truth is that under Clinton and Reagan the economy grew unemployment plummeted and the standard of living of all classes increased. That should be the goal. The gap between the rich and poor increased during those administrations grew but most people did better. It was good.

Well that is unfair. They should pay 10 times as much to their retirement and pay the fewer supervisors 10 times as much. Anything less is not the same percent of production. Paying for the purchase of and or maintenance of the machinery or software doesn't matter because what matters is what percent of production is paid to the workers. Likewise the amont of money the lower class makes and what standard of living they have doesn't matter . We need everyone to have closer to the same amount of toys. Ask anyone marking $10 per hour and they will tell you that they would much rather make 8 bucks per hour with the owner of the company making 100 grand than they would staying at 10 per hour with that greedy owner making a million.

I think if they get paid the agreed-upon rate for 40-hours a week, there's nothing to argue really. I think the issue at hand in many cases is getting folks to keep their noses to the grind stone for the larger percentage of those 8 hours a day is more in question than anything.

If you want to offer things like studies about time wasted because email is more of a distraction these days than helpful, I'd buy that, but I think it's going to be a long time before that new-found issue is resolved, and it's an issue for only a certain cross-section of people. Add to that other distractions like "the phone ringing" and the expectation that it be answered by the programmer/engineer instead of a secretary (because they're considered a waste and the name is even not-PC these days) or you're not providing good customer service, and I'd be interested in that discussion - because I live it with my folks. Tell me that you want to rethink the value brought on by corporate IM solutions and talk about them in their entirety and I'd love to have that discussion. I'd agree that right-sizing needs to consider how the job gets done without those distractions being, well, distractions and extending the typical 8-hour day, five days a week.

So I'm OK with "fighting the man" within reason, but mostly because I'd like to get my people back to doing what they were hired to do, not all the things they weren't. I'd like to go back to having more secretaries and even pretty stewardesses (and real food on flights server with a hot smile). LOL, I'm old! I'd like my engineers and programmers to engineer and program, and not spend so much time not engineering and not programming. But it's an uphill battle to say the least.

But for now, if an employee is getting paid a fair wage (accepting a wage is a good sign that it's fair BTW), and not being asked to work an excessive number of hours daily/weekly, then arguments to the contrary are bunk.

But for now, if an employee is getting paid a fair wage (accepting a wage is a good sign that it's fair BTW), .

This has been explained hundreds of times to the liberals but they'll never get the idea. Remember: liberals are emotional decision makers and the emotion of income inequality plays right into their fragile psyches.

If you don't think you're being paid fairly then quit! There's a real time market out there that will tell you exactly what you're worth. Give it a shot.

No, the workers are contributing to the producing. If your job is to mindlessly punch a button every few seconds all day long, it doesn't matter whether each button push creates one widget or 100 widgets (as a result of the technology behind the button), you're still doing the same job and can be replaced by the same pool of potential button pushers. In that example, the worker creating 100 widgets per button push is no more productive than the worker creating 1 widget. The worker plus technology is 100x more productive though.

Did you skip the post on Rent Seeking?

Or choosing to ignore it?

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"Most of us can, as we choose, make of this world either a palace or a prison."
–John Lubbock

But for now, if an employee is getting paid a fair wage (accepting a wage is a good sign that it's fair BTW), and not being asked to work an excessive number of hours daily/weekly, then arguments to the contrary are bunk.

Accepting a wage is supply and demand. If there is no supply of decent waged jobs, then the employed will too often have to settle for poor waged jobs until something opens up. You're ruling out that in many instances, entry level employees have to settle for work they don't want. And struggle to find work they do want because the opportunity just isn't there.

I'm just surprised that people are so quick to pin the blame on the lower class and others on the 1%, and not on the anti-business policies that tried so hard to protect the middle class.

The point is that the wage rates in America are fairly efficient, about as accurate as can be for a universe of 130m workers. There are some blips-the overpaid and the underpaid-but since we have free movement of labor, the pay normally matches the economic value of the labor.